AT&T And Verizon Comes Out In Support Of Microsoft’s Argument In The Email Privacy Case

Yesterday, we reported that a federal judge in the US ruled Thursday that Microsoft must hand over e-mails stored on an overseas server to US authorities. Following a two-hour court hearing in New York, U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska said the warrant lawfully required the company to hand over any data it controlled, regardless of where it was stored. We already know that companies like AT&T, Verizon, Apple, Cisco and others filed their support for Microsoft’s argument in the court. Today Verizon and AT&T responded to court’s initial verdict,

Verizon’s statement,

“We respectfully disagree with the judge’s opinion for the reasons stated in our General Counsel’s prior blogs (here, and here) and in our amicus brief (PDF). We support Microsoft’s challenge to the decision.

“These matters are very fact-sensitive, and while we have not received a request like this one before, if we were to receive a warrant from the United States Government compelling us to produce data stored by an overseas customer in our overseas data centers, we would challenge the warrant in court.”

AT&T’s statement,

“There is nothing more critical than protecting the privacy and information of every single AT&T customer – no matter the country in which they reside,” Watts said in a statement. “That’s why we’re extremely disappointed with today’s U.S. District court decision in favor of the U.S. government’s extraterritorial search warrant. We will strongly support Microsoft’s pursuit of a stay and subsequently a successful appeal of this decision.”